We invite you to join us for a community event in the WaterFire Arts Center with Carol Coletta, Senior Fellow, American Cities Practice, The Kresge Foundation. This will be an informal conversation with a national thought leader and local practitioners about how cities across America are investing in and programming their public spaces to connect and engage citizens.

Additional speakers:

• Bonnie Nickerson, AICP is Director of the Department of Planning + Development and Executive Director of Providence Redevelopment Agency.
• Stephanie Fortunato is the Director of the Department of Art, Culture + Tourism.
• Barnaby Evans is the Executive Artistic Director of WaterFire Providence.

As communities have segmented by income, technology has advanced and priorities have shifted, support for civic assets has declined. Due to underinvestment and apathy, our civic assets are no longer providing the connective tissue that binds us together and anchors neighborhoods. The result is more than overgrown fields and lackluster libraries: research shows that Americans spend less time together in social settings, trust each other less and interact less with others whose experiences are different.

Cities across the country have the potential to harness their civic commons to improve their communities and our country by fostering great public places that are shared by everyone, a neutral ground where common purpose is nurtured. Check out this video on how Reimagining the Civic Commons aims to restore public life and public support for our shared civic assets.

Please RSVP for this event if you plan to attend.

About Carol Coletta

Carol Coletta is a senior fellow with The Kresge Foundation’s American Cities Practice. She is leading a proposed $40 million collaboration of foundations, nonprofits and governments to demonstrate the ways in which a connected set of civic assets – a civic commons – can yield increased and more widely shared prosperity for cities and neighborhoods.

She formerly was vice president of Community and National Initiatives for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. She led the two-year start-up of ArtPlace, a public-private collaboration to accelerate creative placemaking in communities across the U.S. and was president and CEO of CEOs for Cities for seven years.

She also served as executive director of the Mayors’ Institute on City Design, a partnership of the National Endowment for the Arts, U.S. Conference of Mayors and American Architectural Foundation.

For nine years, she was host and producer of the nationally syndicated weekly public radio show Smart City, where she interviewed more than 900 international leaders in business, the arts and cities.

Founded in 2014 by The Wilbury Theatre Group, FRINGEPVD (The Providence Fringe Festival) is open to anyone who wants to produce their own show. For some artists, it’s a once-a-year opportunity to create a show; for others it can be an opportunity to try something new.

Audiences are encouraged to take full advantage of the variety of performing & visual artists participating in the fringe. Attend performances that you wouldn’t normally attend, see things you wouldn’t otherwise see.

​Keep an open mind, and have fun.
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​The 2018 Providence Fringe Festival is presented by The Wilbury Theatre Group, ​in collaboration with WaterFire Providence.